Chocolate "Guernica"

Around 400 kilos of chocolate have gone into making this original-sized replica of Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, created in 1937. Essentially, “dark” (actually dark brown) and “white” (a light ochre) chocolate and different tones of medium brown. 

The work is split into fourteen uniformly sized pieces, 1.75 metres high by 1.10 wide, in the form of a puzzle with symmetrical pieces. A wooden slab forms the base of each piece, and on top the craftspeople making it have arranged wire mesh to act as a framework. Lightly melted chocolate is used as a binding agent and is applied on the whole ensemble (particularly the mesh). Therefore, when the base layer of chocolate is added and dried it is firmly attached to the board.   

The base of the painting is dark chocolate, half a centimetre thick and spread uniformly across the entire surface. The different figures are arranged on this initial uniform base and in some cases are cut out of chocolate sheets — also half a centimetre thick — while others are painted directly onto the first base in such a way that the final result gives the impression of a three-dimensional relief. The chocolate used is edible and can be consumed. 

This chocolate “Guernica” has been made voluntarily by forty artisan professionals from every Basque territory, inside a framework of cross-border cooperation. The participating craftsmen and women did not, in fact, know one another before embarking on the work. The chocolate “Guernica” project comes into being the same year as the creation of Euskal Gozogileak, the Basque federation of associations of artisan pastry and dessert gastronomy.  

Thus, the work becomes an exponent of Basque artisan dessert and pastry gastronomy, in addition to values such as auzolan (a Basque expression referring to neighbourhood solidarity), the desire to take on challenges and conserve roots and historical memory.